Dania Beach man accused of threats against president, seeking to have family killed

His house was a fortified arsenal

Jason D. Simione, of Dania Beach, is being held on $5 million bond. (BSO )

August 13, 2013|By Tonya Alanez and Wayne K. Roustan, Sun Sentinel

DANIA BEACH — A man accused of seeking to hire a hit man to kill his wife, her mother and brother converted his home into a veritable bunker stocked with more than $1 million in loaded firearms and ammunition, investigators said Tuesday.

Jason Simione, 39, is being held in the Broward Main Jail on $5 million bond. He also is accused of abusing his 9-month-old son. Detectives say he made racially charged rants, going as far as calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama.

Simione, owner of Bulldog Tactical Equipment, a Fort Lauderdale-based company that manufactures tactical and assault gear for the government, military and law enforcement, made an initial court appearance Tuesday morning before Broward County Judge John "Jay" Hurley.

"The court is very concerned on a number of levels," Hurley said. "The court is concerned with his alleged willingness to hire a hit man to kill everyone in his family. …The bomb-making materials seem to be [another] whole avenue of violence … the court's concerned that he's made threats against the president of the United States … with a backdrop of him having alleged materials to make weapons of mass destruction."

Simione's estranged wife, Megumi Simione, and his employees told deputies they had seen the bomb-making materials, including galvanized metal pipes, nails, gunpowder and propane cylinders at Simione's homes in Dania Beach and Stuart.

"When this [bomb] is done and this explodes, it will f--- everyone up," Simione allegedly told an employee, according to an arrest affidavit.

Megumi Simione, 28, contacted sheriff's deputies Friday, saying that ever since the couple separated in February, her husband had been "abusing illegal steroids" and was prone to paranoid behavior, violent outbursts and delusional behavior, according to the affidavit.

She also said that while arguing with an employee last week, Jason Simione threw their son onto a table, causing a bruise and cut on the boy's face, according to Hurley and the affidavit.

Court records show that Megumi Simione had sought a restraining order against her husband in February and again Saturday. Her attorney, Robert Sidweber, declined to comment Tuesday.

Simione's attorney, David Bogenschutz, told the judge his client is in the middle of "a pretty contentious divorce." Bogenschutz did not return calls seeking comment.

The arrest affidavit says Simione offered an employee $150,000 to help him hire a hit man from the MS-13 gang in El Salvador to kill his wife, child, mother-in-law and brother-in-law and had tagged each family member with a "code name." If he could not gain custody of his son, he wanted the boy killed as well, the affidavit said.

"Nobody actually came up from El Salvador," Sheriff's Detective Ricky Libman said. "The person he reached out to actually tried to talk him out of it."

The results of a search warrant at Simione's home in the 4700 block of Southwest 35th Avenue, off Griffin Road, turned up 68 rifles, shotguns and handguns, including a .50-caliber sniper rifle, unassembled components for pipe bombs and approximately 60,000 to 70,000 rounds of ammunition, Libman said.

"When you first walk in [the house] there's body armor, a tactical vest like a SWAT team would wear, extra [ammunition] magazines and a pistol. On each side [of the hallway] there are high-powered rifles," he said. "When you retreat back toward the [master] bedroom, there's a safe room that was fortified. Most of the ammunition was in that room, including a majority of the weapons."

Investigators stressed that Simione legally owned all the weapons and ammunition that was seized for safekeeping. They will be returned if a judge orders it.

"Mr. Simione is a survivalist. These weapons are legal," Libman said. "He had no license to sell the weapons [but] he collects these."

Simione's employees told detectives that Simione had "become increasingly hostile and paranoid," regularly made threats against his wife, expressed "distaste for the United States government policies" and said Obama "should be murdered because he's a n-----," the affidavit said.

A woman who answered the phone at the company, on SW 30th Ave., Tuesday morning declined to comment: "This is a personal matter with him, and I don't want to get our company involved," she said.

Special Agent Peter Alles, of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the threaded galvanized metal pipe, pipe caps, nails, gunpowder, propane cylinders, wire and batteries are components for pipe bombs or improvised explosive devices and "are meant to injure or kill as many persons as possible."

Libman said law enforcement had a bigger concern with what he called the fortified "last-stand room" off the master bedroom, complete with a human silhouette target painted inside the door with X marks on vital organs.